Cyril must learn: a little empathy goes a long way
President Cyril Ramaphosa should take a leaf out of 39-year-old New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s book on the way she used a mixture of compassion, visible presence and firmness during the country’s worst terrorist attack in modern history in March this year, to give direction, restore calm and provide hope.
In a national crisis, the tone set by the country’s leader will determine if the crisis plunges the country into freefall, increases divisions and compounds feelings of hopelessness, or if it binds together the nation in a new resolve to do the right thing.
Almost immediately after a gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, Ardern rushed to the scene of the carnage, embraced the distraught victims, grieving families and shaken communities and condemned the perpetrator. She took all her cabinet ministers to the affected Muslim communities, walked the streets of the tragedy and went into to people’s homes to reassure them.
This week, SA saw violent attacks against foreign black Africans, the looting and burning of their shops and their being blamed for the country’s crime, drugs and corruption.
SA’s epidemic of violence against women was also on full display in the brutal murders of University of Cape Town student Uyinene Mrwetyana, female boxer Leighandre “Baby Lee” Jegels and Janika Mello, a grade 7 pupil from Northwood Primary School in Mitchells Plain.
The wave of xenophobic, gang and taxi violence, femicides and a general breakdown of law and order have created a sense that SA is lawless, leaderless and spiralling into the Armageddon of a failed state. It has dented local and foreign confidence, making it unrealistic to expect any local or foreign investors to seriously want to put their money in this country, with skilled and moneyed locals — who can create jobs — increasingly looking to migrate or move their money abroad.
Throughout all these crises, the ANC and government leadership appears to have been out of their depth, many not grasping the severity of the crisis the country is facing. Some ridiculously came up with conspiracy theories, claiming dark outside forces were “organising” the xenophobic violence.
Extraordinarily, many were surprised when African governments protested by withdrawing from the World
Economic Forum on Africa in
Cape Town, recalling their ambassadors and refusing to play against Bafana. Others again, with patriarchal attitudes, underplayed the attacks against women, as if they are isolated incidents and not a full-blown epidemic. A better response would have been for the president, like Ardern, to immediately go to the sites of violence, walk the streets, embrace the victims, publicly empathise with them and directly face down the perpetrators, reprimanding them for their callousness.
This would have sent a clear message that violence against other Africans will not be tolerated, that no excuses would be accepted for using violence, and to shame perpetrators.
Similarly, the president needed to visit the families of victims of femicides and survivors of abuse. He has to publicly empathise with victims by going directly to their families and communities — even if it means the business of government is stopped — and publicly condemning perpetrators; to show his steely resolve. The president met with the family of Uyinene Mrwetyana on Friday.
The same approach must be adopted with victims of gang and taxi violence. Gangsters and taxi drivers and bosses appear untouchable. The president needs to go to victims and go to the gangsters and taxi bosses and condemn their actions. In that way, the message would be sent that the lives of ordinary South Africans matter — and that gangsters and taxi bosses and drivers are not untouchable.
The president should also make a point of publicly empathising at the individual level with citizens who have been flagrantly abused by public officials and visit government departments where citizens have been abused and condemn these actions. This would restore confidence and hope and promote national healing.
The tone set by the leader determines if [a] crisis increases divisions or binds together